DULUTH, Ga. (WDRB) — For three months, Louisville basketball carried a question around like a loose bolt in its pocket.
Everywhere the Cardinals went, it rattled.
They had wins. Plenty of them. Twenty-one of them entering Saturday. They had talent. Shooters. Playmakers. A freshman star. They had moments.
What they didn't have was one of these.
A road game. A ranked opponent. A tight finish, the kind of game that usually decides whether a good season turns into a memorable March.
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
Saturday afternoon at Miami, Louisville finally picked that lock.
The Cardinals beat No. 22 Miami 92–89, surviving a furious second-half rally and six lead changes in the final minutes to close the regular season with something they hadn't managed all year: a Quad 1A victory.
And they did it without their best player.
Ryan Conwell scored 24 points. Adrian Wooley hit the shot that mattered most: a cold-blooded three with 18 seconds left. J'Vonne Hadley added 16. Isaac McKneely had 15.
Louisville shot 61 percent from the field and 50 percent from three in a game where offense had to be nearly perfect.
More important than any of it: they dug in defensively when they had to. Sure, they gave up 89 points. But they're not going to be a team that holds opponents to 50. They don't need to. They just need stops that matter.
Saturday, they got some.
That hadn't always been the case.
All season long, Louisville had hovered near the edge of this kind of breakthrough without quite getting there.
They lost close ones to good teams. They fell in Quad 1A games. They looked like a dangerous team, just not yet a proven one.
Until Saturday.
“That's how tournament games are going to be,” coach Pat Kelsey said afterward. “They're going to come down to a possession or two.”
Saturday did.
Louisville led most of the afternoon, opening the game on a 13–2 run and building a 12-point lead early in the second half. Miami chipped away, as good teams do at home.
Tre Donaldson tied the game at 77 with a three. Moments later, the Hurricanes took their first lead.
For Louisville, this was the part of the movie where things had sometimes gone wrong. Instead, the Cardinals stayed composed.
Conwell, who had poured in 18 points in the first half before Miami started face-guarding him, didn't force shots.
Others stepped forward. Wooley drove. Hadley attacked. McKneely created -- even hit some midrange jumpers.
Down by one late, Wooley found daylight at the top of the key.
Stepback. Net. Louisville up two.
Two Conwell free throws and one more from Sananda Fru later, the Cardinals had something they hadn't had in a long time: a road win over a ranked team. The last one came Jan. 18, 2020, at Duke.
It also secured Louisville the No. 6 seed in next week's ACC Tournament, where the Cardinals will play Wednesday afternoon against the SMU–Syracuse winner.
But the significance of Saturday goes beyond seeding.
For months, Louisville has looked like a team capable of something interesting in March, if a few things broke right. The Cardinals have shooting. They move the ball. They have veterans who don't panic.
And when healthy, they also have Mikel Brown Jr., the freshman star who missed his 10th game Saturday with a back injury.
If he returns, Louisville becomes a different kind of problem.
But even if he doesn't — at least not right away — the Cardinals learned something important Saturday. They learned they can survive the late run. They learned they can close. Kelsey called it “grit and resolve.”
Beating Miami matters. But what may matter more is what Louisville proved it can do.
For the first time in a while, the Cardinals showed they can win the kind of game March demands.
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